Using Software to Integrate the Accounting and Supply Chain Management (Case Study Sample)

Using Software to Integrate the Accounting and Supply Chain Management
[Name]
[Institutional Affiliation]
Abstract
The Software Development Department has been instructed to integrate the Supply Chain Processes and associated Accounting activities using a software technique. The security of information is one of the major requirements of this solution. This report presents a brief review on Secure Software Development Life Cycles. The participation of the internal departments and the requirements of the independent actors like supplier and retailers is encouraged for the successful implementation of the software application. The report is intended to be reviewed by the authorities in the organization including Accounts Manager, Information Security Specialist, and the Project Manager.
Using Software to Integrate the Accounting and Supply Chain Management
1 Introduction
It is an admitted fact that it is of extreme importance for a company to understand the value of supply chain and its management to achieve its objectives. In today’s competitive business environment the integration of accounting system with the supply chain processes is a necessary factor to achieve sustainable financial performance (Wahdan & Emam, 2017). However, there is very little literature available on the integration of the accounting systems with the supply chain management processes. The supply chain processes consists of several parts including the procurement, processing, production, and the marketing of the finalized products. These arrangement involve the mechanisms of marketing, management, financial allocation, logistics, and the organizational behavior. Over the last few years there has been an extensive research to improve the supply chain management procedures and efficiency of the organizational processes. The supply chain involves a number of independent partners as well as the different departments within an organization. The security of transactional and accounting processes within the organization and the external independent stake holders is of vital importance to reduce the risks associated with the integration of accounting and supply chain management process via software (Wahdan & Emam, 2017). In this research report, the issue of software development and its integration with the accounting and supply chain processes is discussed in detail with a special focus on the security of the information.
Step : Software Development Life Cycle Assessment (Five pages)
2 Theoretical Background
This report is particularly focused on the relationships between the accounting processes, supply chain SC processes, SC management, and the relationship between the SC management and accounting processes within an organization. The differentiation between the SC management accounting practices and SC management accounting techniques is crucial to develop a solid understanding for the software development process. The SC management accounting technique is a set of guidelines provided to the employees or the management staff to gather and manipulate cost or performance information to develop SC decision making and controlling mechanism (Joyce, 2006). The SC management practices is the best practices of SC management and related accounting processes to achieve the organizational goals in an efficient manner. The SC strategy is believed to be a process in which firm’s applies its best practices, strategic choices, and decisions to handle the risks in the SC processes.
The relationship structure between the supply chain management processes and the accounting processes is presented in the figure 1. The integration process consists of the firm’s ability to integrate the SCM processes with its accounting objectives. The organization also requires to integrate the activities between the suppliers, customers, and the markets.
Figure 1: Relationship between the supply chain management and accounting procedures and management (Joyce, 2006).
The supply chain management consists of two main strategies, first one is known as the lean management techniques and the other as agile management. The lean management involves the pursuit of the process efficiency, cost effectiveness, and effective management of costs with the focus on the improvement of quality. The agile SCM technique give the managers necessary space to adapt to rapidly changing customer needs in the SCM. The agile SCM technique is focused on the risk reduction according to the external factors and the competitions in the market. The main differences between the two approaches are summarized in the table below:
Table 1: Difference between Lean and Agile Management Techniques (Joyce, 2006).
Secure SDLC development
An efficient software application is written to achieve its planned purposes, provides a user friendly environment, and has a strong security and privacy. Despite an extensive research in the cyber and software security fields, there are many applications which fail to achieve its goals and provide a safe environment to its users. The major reason behind this is the fact that many software managers lack systematic measures, develop security protocols, reviews and feedback processes during the software development process (Davis, 2010). It is important to develop a framework which can be implemented from the beginning of the software development process to its final implementation. It is necessary to include security oriented thinking during the software development process. Moreover, the development processes should be reviewed by the security experts as well as the users if required to reduce the security risks throughout the development process. However, the risks can be minimized during SDLC but cannot be eliminated until it is evaluated in an implemented environment.
The development of a high quality and secure software application is a labor intensive and complex tasks. It involves the security measurements right from the start which are generally omitted in the traditional SDCL (Davis, 2010). Most of the software developers are not equipped with the tools required for a secure software development. It is crucial to involve network and security engineers to evaluate the security of the software from its start to the implementation phase. The security engineers should be able to identify the flaws in the design of the software development. Once these factors are identified a secure design of the software can be developed. Software engineers must be able to identify, assume, and document possible vulnerabilities in their software design process and the development.
The establishment of the code is the basic and one of the most important tasks to develop a secure software application. However, the review of the code for the security flaws is only a part of the security solution and not a complete solution. A comprehensive security mechanism should include the two strategies summarized in the following points.
* The functional tests of the software applications should be performed at regular intervals to test the security functionality of the software.
* The attack models and patterns should be tested on the software, ensuring the proper operation and preparation of the code against the common and advanced security threats.
3. Proposed Data Acquisition Technique
The objective of the software to be developed here is to provide security to accounting operations and to integrate the SCM processes with it. The first phase of the proposed mechanism is to conduct interviews with the stakeholders, project managers, accounts staff, and the information security professionals of the organization (Bano & Zowghi, 2013). The aim of this exercise is to have a clear idea of the requirements, the concerned risks associated with the development of the software, the knowledge of the stake holders regarding the SDLC process, and finally create a security mechanism for the development of the required application. After the initial design and execution of the software application it is planned to conduct a survey to analyze its performance and the efficiency of the security mechanism.
In the entire SDLC process the software engineers play an important role as they are the brains behind the development and implementation process. It is crucial for the software engineers to develop a security-minded thinking throughout the project. The security policies, protocols, standards, tools, and skills should properly recognized and documented to avoid inconveniences in the maintenance operations in the future.
Figure 2: Requirement and Proposed Plan for development (Bano & Zowghi, 2013).
The SDLC matrix for the development and implementation process can be represented by the following figure.
Step 8: Software Development Matrix (ONE PAGE)
Figure 3: SDLC Matrix for the application development (Bano & Zowghi, 2013).
The interviews were conducted to understand the requirements and the security context as perceived by the stakeholders in the transformation. The people involved in the interview process were the main members involved in the business process to be automated. A comprehensive document analysis regarding the development of the secure software applications will also be conducted to get the requirements which were not highlighted by the interviews. The document review will include the analysis of best security practices during SDLC, practices, and protocols used by the security experts. The theoretical review’s framework can be represented by the following diagram
Figure 4: Theoretical Framework (Bano & Zowghi, 2013).
Online and hard copy interviews are planned to be conducted from the professionals. The targeted profiles for the interviews are planned to be:
* Project Managers
* Supply Chain Managers
* Quality Control Managers
* Information Securi...